Russia Tops the Black Market for Social Media Manipulation

The NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence and the Kharkiv-based company Singularex have conducted a study on the market for social media manipulation, revealing the dominance of Russian bot farms, according to the BBC.

Despite social media platforms agreeing on joint measures to counter manipulative practices, the bot farm market continues to grow, and there is no sign that inflating likes, views, and comments has become any more difficult, the report states.

The researchers spent 300 euros to purchase reactions, views, and followers on social networks. They divided the budget among sixteen bot farms: eleven were Russian, two were German, and one each from Poland, Italy, and France. According to experts, Russian bot farms were the cheapest.

After the bot services began fulfilling the order and likes and comments started appearing under the targeted posts, the experts identified 18,700 bots, many of which were used in other “campaigns” as well. By tracking other comments made by these bots, the researchers discovered that they had already been used for 721 politically oriented pages, 52 government agency pages, and two official presidential pages. The researchers did not disclose specific pages, public figures, or the names of the bot farms involved.

Analyzing the resilience of social networks to bot attacks, the researchers concluded that social media platforms are vulnerable and cannot handle the threat on their own. Instagram was found to be the easiest platform to manipulate, while Twitter was the most difficult. VKontakte was not mentioned in the study.